A wide variety of storage system, such as shelves, racks and the like, are used in both the retail and wholesale trades for storing and displaying items for sale. One common type of shelf system that is used, particularly in home improvement centers, and "warehouse-club" types of establishments, is commonly referred to as a pallet rack. Other types of heavy-duty shelving systems are also known and widely used.
Such storage systems typically include vertical risers or posts for supporting one or more shelves. The shelves span the area between the vertical posts. Although these shelves are primarily used to store consumer-accessible items, they are also often used to store merchandise stock. To this end, doors or covers can be mounted in front of these stock-storage shelves in order to deter consumer access or to prevent what might otherwise be an unsightly or unaesthetically appealing storage arrangement of merchandise.
Known door mount systems suffer from a number of drawbacks. First, such systems are installation intensive. That is, these known system include numerous parts, and thus require considerable labor to install. In addition, such systems often include a large number of parts, and in particular small parts, such as hinges, nuts, bolts and the like, which can become easily lost or misplaced. As such, installation time and labor can be even greater than necessary.
Moreover, these door systems can be bulky and difficult to install, particularly if the doors are large. These large, bulky door panels can be difficult to install and align when attempting to fit hinge pins or hinge posts into small openings, with the weight, and center of gravity of the doors making it difficult and unwieldy to maintain the doors steady.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a door and hinge assembly for mounting doors to storage racks. Desirably, such an assembly provides an essentially tool-less installation and permits readily installing covering doors to provide an aesthetically appealing visual appearance to such storage shelves.